


Nova Scullia

by feldman



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Early Work, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-10-20
Updated: 1999-10-20
Packaged: 2018-02-05 02:39:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1802320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feldman/pseuds/feldman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mulder contemplates being the Anti-Prince Charming, whose kiss causes shock, paralysis and the unexpected transfer of power in a relationship. [Originally posted on Scullyfic and Gossamer in 1999].</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nova Scullia

I like making people nervous. My favorite stupidvisor game had always been to tell bad jokes and watch my staff squirm because they couldn't laugh at how lame I was. I'd written Krycek off as a sniveling brown-nose based completely on his lack of personal style and the fact that he actually laughed at the monkey with the cork joke. 

Well, I didn't go into psychology because I was good with people. 

~*~

I would watch the blood slip down toward her lip, a bright thick shade of red I'd never seen her wear, and I would often think about mummification. I'd think about the brass hooks the embalmers would use to stir up the pudding of the brain, allowing it to run out through the wounds they'd made deep in the nose. Thixotropic: becoming liquid when stirred.

In a fit of black humor she'd once joked that too much of her vigilance had been wasted preventing skin cancer. She wore sunscreen year round. She spent nearly an hour every year while her dermatologist inspected each freckle and mole. Instead her brain had gone bad. It's funny, 'cause I'd never felt envious of a dermatologist before then.

I could describe the co-ordinates of each little brown dot on her hands, her neck, the inside of her left calf, but to think that there were whole constellations beyond my ken, well... The drawback of even the best memory is that you can only recall what you've paid attention to, such as peach panties and mosquito bites that have long since faded back into pale skin. Or for that matter, the burning taste and the sharp smell of chrysalis fluid, those full lips cold and bloodless in her drowned kitten face. 

It's not that I want to nail her per se, though I understand Frohike's attraction. It's just that after a few years you think you know someone. It's disconcerting to find out that you really don't.

~*~

I tend toward Bradbury myself, but again I've got to agree with Frohike that there's some great moments in Clark's 2001 series. At one point, Jupiter is seeded with self-replicating Monoliths, which serve to increase it's mass enough for the gas giant to become a small star. Lately I've been thinking about this image, this spectacular change. 

Scully spinning slowly like a galaxy, accumulating trauma and tragedy, rotating ever heavier with guilt and pain and fear, suddenly hitting the point where fusion begins, where inert matter becomes a star. 

Boom.

Reserved chuckles transformed into a throaty guffaw that sluiced over me like warm water the first time I heard it. The drawn tightness that had settled into her expression along with the chemo, melted away with the rest of her ice pack. A luminous medieval humour now flows through her, sloughing off the pained forbearance along with the windburn from her cheeks, leaving a sly smirk around her eyes and often on her lips as well. She even told me a dirty joke the other day. I think she liked it when I didn't know whether to laugh.

And so I've been pondering.

Whenever my hands and mouth are bent to a mindless task, phone jammed between shoulder and ear, ticking off each successive question on a list I no longer need to look at but still obsessively do, I glance back and I ponder.

When did Scully become fun?

~*~

The problem with psychology as a field, as an esteemed professor would burr in his thick Scots accent, is that it's "the study of the Id by the Odd." Unlike medicine, psychology has only recently begun to examine the healthy state of functioning. And so a dead-hearted butcher like Monticello Props has almost no chance against a guy like me, yet in the case of Nova Scullia it was nearly a month before the realization dawned on me.

Scully was probably always fun, she's just decided that now it's okay to be fun with me.

But what brought on this change of heart re: Mulder? My jokes aren't any funnier, that's for sure. Was it a remnant of alien DNA, or some rogue protein manufactured by her anti-cancer chip that cruised through her brain and caused this sea change in behaviour? Is green goo a new kind of personality lube, a social KY destined to replace alcohol within the next decade? GHB in her grape Crush? 

When I finally banged my square peg mind through this round hole problem, the new perspective was dizzying. It was probably my blathering confession in the hallway that caused this cataclysmic change. I am the Mulderlith. 

~*~

She's always had a bit of a dominant streak with others, but she'd always toned it down with me. I was the department head, I was in the driver's seat, and I got to choose from her alternatives, not her ultimatums. My mistake was in coming to believe that her deference was due to anything but professionalism. I started thinking of her like a terrier. Tenacious, intelligent and lap-sized. So what if I let her up on the couch for a treat, she's been a good girl and I've neglected her enough to make her want to run   
away. Yeah, did I mention that I'm not really good with people?

I should never have acknowledged how much I needed her. This is the kind of person who, quitting chemo, put the weight back on as muscle.

Since the ensuing National Geographic Exploration was on the government's tab, it's probably the least expensive thing that's happened in that hallway. You wouldn't believe what my last rent increase was, just because of crap that my landlord was able to trace back to me, usually by means of a bloody trail right to my door. Or casualties out in the street. Most of my neighbors don't even make eye contact, except the Noburi family downstairs. They're new to the building, and I've only heard the son speak English.

It's the Noburis who called 911 and directed traffic around me while I lay in a gruel of cubed safety glass and my own blood, and Mrs. Noburi calmed me down when the EMTs tried to fasten me to the backboard and I started raving about Russians and chickenwire. I didn't know about any of this until last week when ten year old Josh Noburi dropped off some misdelivered mail and kept me in the doorway for twenty minutes regaling me with sordid details and impertinent questions.

I'm pretty sure he stole the mail in the first place, I'm a bad influence on the whole building. Soon, everyone will make groping passes at their co-workers, even in the laundry room.

My own account of that night is far from complete, so between the anoxia and fever who knows how much she even remembers? Unfortunately, it's safe to say she took the gist of my emotional seppuku with her, contemplating it like a samadhi deep in the cave of the greys. If she hadn't already resigned, she might've asked for a raise by the time I found her.

Hell, I'd just wanted her to stay.


End file.
